Harriet continued to wiggle and press, continued to throw her weight forward, and thus made slow and painful progress inch by inch. At last she felt her hips and rump clear the rim and her elation turned into fear as she then plummeted headfirst out of the porthole. She fell for what seemed only a fraction of a second before hitting the icy water.
Harriet lacked the presence of mind to hold her breath. Indeed, her emotional condition was so shaky at the moment that any attempt at holding her breath would have failed. She struggled underwater to climb back up to the surface as she coughed and inhaled the filthy water alternately. When her head broke the surface she was nearly passing out, but desperation gave her a strength which she would not otherwise have possessed, and she flailed her arms and legs desperately in an attempt to draw closer to the wharf. She felt herself failing, however, felt her legs growing numb from the bitter cold, felt her consciousness fading as water and mucus streamed from her mouth and nostrils. Her lungs gulped air and water both as her head bobbed in and out of the water. She tried to cry for help, but no words came forth from her mouth, only more water, more mucus.
Harriet's vision was becoming blurry when she felt a hand grasp her by the arm. Hadji! she cried to herself and tried to focus her eyes on the face before her. She laughed aloud at the bearded Gallic face which was smiling at her and speaking soothingly in French. The man had lowered himself down on a rope and he was holding her arm tightly with one hand as he held on to the rope with the other. In a few moments she felt a tug and looked up to see a group of men leaning over the edge of the slip and watching them as the stevedores began to pull on the rope and hoist Harriet and her rescuer upward.
A multitude of hands grasped her by the arms and waist and lifted her up onto the dock. Their voices blended into a cacophony of concern and cheer, and she wished that she knew enough French to be able to thank them.
Her joy dissipated instantly when she looked at the ship and saw Hadji standing at the rail, screaming at her. She realized that she was not safe, nowhere near safe, as long as either Hadji or Sekhemib knew where she was. She broke free of the supporting hands and ran wildly away from the dock, knowing not where she was running but knowing that she had to put as much distance between her and the ship as possible, as soon as possible. She ran into a few people, knocking them down but not stopping, not speaking, just running madly.
She left the wharf area and entered the industrial morass which was the coastal district of the coastal city. She ignored the angry shouts and jeers which followed her as she tan. Harriet came to a corner and turned, running down the narrow street, plowing through the crowd like the bow of a ship through waves, sending people and possessions sprawling. A hand grabbed her firmly on the shoulder and she fell as her legs continued to move while her upper body was held immobile.
She hit the ground hard and a sharp pain shot up her left side. She looked up into the face of the policeman, who was glowering at her angrily and yelling in French. "I need help, protection," she screamed back at him. "Do you speak English? I need protection." An idea flashed into her mind and she started yelling, "American consulate! Where is the American consulate? Le consul de Etats-Unis," she said, dredging up words from her high-school French class and forgetting the grammar. "Le consu—la consul—Oh, Christ, American consulate! American consulate!"
The policeman seemed either not to understand her or not to care. He continued to yell at her, shaking her by the shoulders. She tried to pull free from his grip but he tightened his hold on her.
Ahmed Hadji came running up behind her and began screaming at the policeman in what sounded like heavily accented French. Hadji tried to grab Harriet by the arm but the policeman struck his hand away and began to outshout him. Harriet kept pulling, but her strength was not adequate. Then she felt the policeman's grip suddenly loosen and then drop from her shoulders. She was elated until she tried to turn and run and found that she could not move. She looked down, hoping to find the impediment to her motion. There was none.
Sekhemib, she thought with despair.
The priest of Anubis approached them through the crowd, which parted before him, whether by his will or their own volition. He walked over to Harriet, his eyes blazing with anger, and said in the ancient tongue, "Some slaves prove to be more troublesome than others, but any slave can be broken. Thou hast been a trouble to me this day, Heret, and thou shalt be punished." She felt her legs moving and beginning to take her back toward the docks. The policeman stood staring at them, bewildered and angry, and Hadji began to speak to him, saying anything which came into his mind, anything which would end the altercation there and then. Harriet walked beside Sekhemib silently, trying to force her voice to cry out, trying to stop her legs from moving, and failing, failing.
No way out, she thought miserably. Doomed. No way out.
They reached the ship in a few minutes and walked with a silent dignity past the crowd of dockworkers who had just effected her rescue. They yelled and babbled as she and Sekhemib passed, but she could not help but ignore them. Her limbs, her voice, her mind were not her own. They mounted the gangplank and boarded the ship, just as Hadji, panting heavily, ran up behind them. "My lord," he began.
Sekhemib turned on him viciously and struck him across the face. "Did I not command thee to bind the woman? Are even the simplest tasks beyond thine abilities?"
Hadji dropped to his knees and bowed his head. A few drops of blood were oozing from the corner of his lip as he said, "I implore you to forgive me, my lord. I beg my lord's forgiveness."
Sekhemib placed his balled fists on his hips and said, "Take her and bind her, Ahmed Hadji. Fail again, and this life shall be thy last!" Sekhemib turned angrily on his heel and strode quickly away from them. Hadji watched him go with a manner of tremulous obsequiousness.
He rose to his feet and grabbed Harriet around the waist. He kicked open a cabin door and threw her into the cabin, sending her onto the floor with a resounding thud. "You bitch!" he shrieked at her. "I ought to kill you right now!"
"Well, why don't you!" she screamed back at him, her tears beginning to flow afresh. "Don't do me any favors, you greasy son of a bitch!" She got to her feet and swung her fist at him. He deflected the blow with ease and then struck her in the face with a closed fist. Harriet lost consciousness under the impact of the blow, and she awakened shortly thereafter with a terrible throbbing pain at the left hinge of her jaw. Hadji was busily engaged in binding her once again, this time to a heavy wooden table. He had wrapped rope around her ankles, her calves, and her thighs, tying her legs to together from foot to buttocks. He proceeded to tie her wrists behind her back, connect the bonds of her wrists to those of her ankles, and then connect the entire length of rope to the leg of the heavy table.
Hadji stood back and glared at her. "Now listen to me, woman, and listen well. I have devoted my life to the gods in the hopes of defeating death. I have been successful in rescuing Sekhemib and the other immortals from your silly little museum, and soon we will be safe at home in Egypt, where I will receive my reward for my faithful service."
"Congratulations," she spat.
"Shut up! I am warning you, if you do anything else to make my master angry at me, I will make you pay, pay so dearly that death will come as a welcome relief!" He began to pace the room as he yelled at her. "I told him that we had no need of you once we had left your country, I told him that we would be safer if we disposed of you then, but he would not agree. He wants you to be a tekenu, the gods alone know why! And so you still live." He dropped to his knees beside her. "But mark me, woman! If you cause me any further embarrassment, I will present you as a tekenu at the holy place without eyes or tongue, without arms or legs, do you understand me?" He rose swiftly and left her lying on her side. The door slammed loudly behind him.
I was so close, she thought mournfully, so close.
Hours passed and Harriet lay weeping softly. She listened to the sounds of the crew carrying things onto the ship, heard the
loud voices calling back and forth in the singsong language of China, broken on occasion by distant sounds of French from the wharf. She was not aware of any sensation of movement when the ship sailed out of the harbor, but the vibrating strain of the engines, which she felt clearly through the wooden floor upon which she was lying, told her of their departure. She waited for Hadji or Sekhemib to come up and release her, but time continued to pass and she was left alone in the dark cabin.
The sun had been down for a long while when she heard the door open and looked up to see Sekhemib enter, followed by Hadji. The latter was carrying a tray which he placed on the table before kneeling down to cut her bonds. When the last of the ropes had been removed, Harriet moved painfully up onto her knees. Her entire body ached and her joints were sore. She gently touched the painful swelling on her jaw and winced as the featherlike touch of her forefinger sent a jolt of pain shooting across her face. She reached up and placed her hand flat upon the tabletop and slowly pushed herself up onto her feet. Then she looked defiantly at Sekhemib.
He pointed at the tray which Hadji had placed on the table. "Eat," he commanded her. Then he turned and walked out with Hadji in tow. The door slammed behind them.
Harriet looked at the door wistfully for a moment and then turned her attention to the food upon the table. Rice and fish and a bottle of some nondescript Asian beer. The beer was warm. The rice and fish were cold. She ate and drank anyway.
When she was done she walked over to the door and tried the knob. To her surprise, it had not been locked from outside. She opened it and walked out onto the deck, pulling the collar of her blouse closed against the chilly night air. She heard the gulls crying in the distance and saw the lights of Brest fading far beyond the stern of the ship.
Sekhemib approached her slowly, seeming to appear gradually out of the darkness. He had wrapped a woolen robe around himself and looked for all the world like a Bedouin. He walked up to her and stared at her. She felt her knees grow weak and her heart flutter under his penetrating gaze. My God, she thought, he terrifies me! All the foolish hopes of escape and freedom had left her, replaced only by fear and trepidation, fear so intense that it drowned out even her deep depression.
He stared at her long and hard for a few minutes and then abruptly turned to look out to sea. He leaned his forearms against the railing and put his weight on them, bending the knee of one leg and lounging forward casually. "Thou hast angered me," he said, but he did not sound angry.
"I know," she replied in a monotone. "What do you expect from me, that I should go smiling to my death?"
He shook his head slowly from side to side. "No, Heret, no. Thou strivest to live, and that is what all things which live strive to do." His voice carried a hint of something, regret perhaps, or sorrow.
She looked at his face and thought she saw him frown slightly, but it was not an angry frown, it was a sad one. "Must you kill?" she asked softly. "All those innocent people, all those innocent lives snuffed out. Can you not give up your life so that others might live?"
He glanced at her impatiently. "Art thou willing to give up thy life so that Meret might live? Thou speakest foolishness, Heret."
"No, for it is my life, not hers. Do I not have a right to my own life? Do not we all have the right to live?"
Sekhemib did not answer. He stared intently out at the black undulations of the waves and the winds. At last he said in a soft, dreamy voice, "When Zoser ruled in Egypt in the days before the pyramids were built, Meret and I lived in a small daub and wattle but near the Nile, not far from the village which would later become Thebes. We had grown weary of opulence, bored with the purposeless and uninteresting pursuit of pleasure, tired of being served. So we decided to go down unto the common people and live in their manner for a while." He smiled. "It was all a game, a form of play."
"Marie Antoinette's sheep," she muttered.
"What?"
"A queen of—of the country we just left," she explained wearily. "She liked to play at being a simple peasant girl as a diversion."
"Precisely. A diversion. Yuya and Senmut thought we were mad, but they just laughed as we went our ways. We always returned for the ceremonies, of course, but we lived out many years in happy peacefulness in the hut. I fished in the Nile and Meret ground the grain into flour, and we laughed at the naked children playing on the bank of the river."
He turned and faced her. "But we had to leave, we had to return to the temple and the palace in the wilderness. We must treat the people—the mortals, the tekenues—as animals awaiting slaughter, Heret, or else we would weaken and die forever. Life feeds on death. It has always been so, from the lion devouring the gazelle to the human devouring the lamb. He cannot love the lamb, the lion cannot love the gazelle. The beloved of Anubis cannot feel the pain of the tekenu. It must be so."
Harriet began to weep again, but forced herself to restrain her tears. "But I want to live, Sekhemib. I want to live! I am not an animal, I am a human being."
"Thou are a mortal," he said firmly, "I feel some affection for thee, Heret, but it is the affection one feels for a pet. It would be easier if thou wert a dumb beast, not knowing what awaited thee, but thou art not."
"Then why are you taking me with you? You can find your damned tekenues in Egypt. Why not kill me now, or let me go?"
He closed his eyes for a moment and then said, "I have told thee that we partake of some aspect of the mortals whose souls we drink. I want my Meret to drink thy soul when we come unto the holy place in Egypt." He turned back toward the sea and leaned over the railing, crossing his right leg over his left. "Women were not like unto thee in old times. I wish thy soul to nourish my Meret."
Harriet looked at Sekhemib's position. He had put all of his weight on his left leg and was leaning far over the railing. A mad impulse seized her, impelling her to an act of desperation. She dropped quickly to her knees and grabbed Sekhemib firmly around the knees. He was momentarily startled, but that moment was all she needed to push herself up onto her feet, causing him to fall forward over the railing.
Sekhemib cried, "Hadji! Hadji!" as he fought to retain the grip his right hand had on the railing. Harriet began to pound his hand with her fists, but he was able to wrap his left hand around the railing also. She raised her fist to strike at him, but he was once again in control. Her hand stopped moving in midair and she stood frozen.
Sekhemib climbed back up over the railing as Hadji came running up to him. "My lord!" he asked breathlessly. "What—"
"Assemble the crew!" Sekhemib shouted between clenched teeth. "Now!" As Hadji scampered away, Sekhemib released Harriet from her paralysis. His eyes seemed to glow with fury "I had forgiven thee for thine attempt to flee, but for this thou shalt not be forgiven. Stiff-necked slave!" He struck her hard across the mouth, sending her sprawling onto the deck, waves of pain radiating from her already injured jaw. "Rise up!" he hissed. She struggled against his will, but in the end she complied, and she walked unsteadily in the direction his mind caused her feet to follow. They walked down the steps to the cargo loading area of the ship, which was at the moment devoid of all cargo save the crates of supplies which had been loaded at Brest. The Chinese crew had been summoned by the captain at Hadji's request, and they were come in ones and twos from all over the ship. They milled about, confused and cold.
Harriet felt herself walking forward even after Sekhemib stopped. She moved, trancelike, into the middle of the cargo deck and then stopped abruptly. She heard Sekhemib's voice whispering in her mind. "A slave must be punished in order to be taught, Heret. It is yet a long way to Egypt. Learn well thy lesson!"
Harriet fought to control her limbs, but the will of the ancient priest was so much more powerful than her own that her efforts did not in the slightest impede the directions he was sending to her arms and hands. She clenched her eyes shut as her fingers moved beneath the bottom of her sweater and slowly pulled it up over her head. The sweater was tossed away, and then she felt her fingers move to her ba
ck. She unhooked her bra and then pulled the straps down from her shoulders. The bra fell to the deck, and a murmur of delight and appreciation arose from the assembled crew as her pendulous breasts came into view. She struggled all the while to prevent her hands from following the commands of Sekhemib, but she was able to offer absolutely no effective resistance. Her nipples contracted painfully as the cold sea wind smote them. She tried to will herself into unconsciousness, tried to sever her mind and sensations and awareness from what she was doing, or rather from what she was being forced to do. But this too was of no avail. Though her eyes were closed, she remained miserably aware of each and every movement of her limbs.
She felt her hands reach up and cup her breasts in a horrid parody of seductive manipulation, felt them squeeze and knead the soft flesh, felt them tweak and pull on the light brown nipples. She fought to restrain the tears which were gathering beneath her eyelids as the sounds of laughter and vulgar appraisal reached her ears from the dozens of unwashed men who surrounded her. She failed in this as well, and the salty liquid began to pour freely from her eyes.
Her hands pulled open the snap on the front of her dungarees and then pulled down the zipper. She bent over as she pulled the dungarees down around her ankles and then stepped out of them. She felt her hands pulling down her underpants, felt her right foot step out of them, felt her left foot kick them away. She stood naked upon the deck in the midst of the crew, and she heard the lewd cackle of Ahmed Hadji's laughter above the excited chuckles which came from all around her.
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